Was working in a photoengraving studio in San Francisco in 1906 when the Great Quake hit. Among the buildings destroyed was the one that housed the studio he worked in. Now unemployed, he drifted to Los Angeles and got a job at another photoengraving studio, this one just down the street from the
Mack Sennett studios. He got to know Sennett, and
eventually was hired away from the photo studio as a gag writer and later director for Sennett.